A.J. Brandiosa and his best friend Tully have finally made it! They're on the Moose Jaw Saskathewan AAA hockey team The Cyclones. All that working out has finally gotten rid of A.J.'s pesky baby fat and he's starting to like the way that he looks and the way that he can accomplish things on the ice that have always eluded him. Tully has always been the popular showboat both on and off the rink. But when A.J. gets a bit too physical in an early game and gets labelled as a "Bad Boy" and the team's enforcer it's A.J.'s name that gets in the paper and A.J kinda likes the attention. But then A.J. discovers that his best friend is gay. Worried about his own reputation and even more worried by his feelings about Tully that he now sees in a different light, A.J. must re-evaluate everything in his life and how's he gonna do that when it was always Tully that he could confide in?
Born and raised in rural Michigan, when I first heard about this book I was intrigued. What's not to like about an award winning coming out story that features masculine rural guys and hockey players no less? Then I read some of the negative reviews...
One 2012 review called this 1989 Governor General Award winner incredibly dated. After reading the book myself I believe that that's a bit unfair. Growing up in a remote rural area is a bit like growing up in the past and I'm pretty certain that much of the way that Moose Jaw is painted in this book is just as true today as when the book was first published.
Another reviewer objected to Tully's telling A.J. that A.J. wasn't gay and because Tully was a gay guy, A.J. took his word for it. Fact is, I believe that A.J. really wasn't gay, though he might have been willing to try it for Tully. A.J. was attracted to women throughout the book. Yes, he had some erotic thoughts about Tully as well but they mostly unsettling for him. And the guy's had a dynamic where Tully did tell A.J. how to think about things. This was really just an extension of their instigator-follower type of relationship.
On the whole this was really a well thought out story of two guys redefining their relationship in the aftermath of one of them coming out. For me it read as realistic and insightful and still as relevant as when it was published over 20 years ago. I'd recommend it.
Born and raised in rural Michigan, when I first heard about this book I was intrigued. What's not to like about an award winning coming out story that features masculine rural guys and hockey players no less? Then I read some of the negative reviews...
One 2012 review called this 1989 Governor General Award winner incredibly dated. After reading the book myself I believe that that's a bit unfair. Growing up in a remote rural area is a bit like growing up in the past and I'm pretty certain that much of the way that Moose Jaw is painted in this book is just as true today as when the book was first published.
Another reviewer objected to Tully's telling A.J. that A.J. wasn't gay and because Tully was a gay guy, A.J. took his word for it. Fact is, I believe that A.J. really wasn't gay, though he might have been willing to try it for Tully. A.J. was attracted to women throughout the book. Yes, he had some erotic thoughts about Tully as well but they mostly unsettling for him. And the guy's had a dynamic where Tully did tell A.J. how to think about things. This was really just an extension of their instigator-follower type of relationship.
On the whole this was really a well thought out story of two guys redefining their relationship in the aftermath of one of them coming out. For me it read as realistic and insightful and still as relevant as when it was published over 20 years ago. I'd recommend it.
